Bueno de Mesquita discusses The Dictator's Handbook

by Beth Stefanik, Reves Center for International Studies
|
February 21, 2012

On February 10, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, professor of
Political Science at New York University, presented the models of his latest
book, “The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good
Politics.”

“It takes very few variables to understand what goes on in
the world of politics,” Bueno de Mesquita told the standing room-only crowd in
the Sadler Center, before examining both current and historical cases in which
authoritarian rulers used foreign and domestic policy tools to maintain their
power.

Bueno de Mesquita, whose research interests include
international conflict, foreign policy formation, and peace processes, is
well-known and controversial within political science for using formal models
and statistical methods to predict political outcomes.

He is one of several authors of the “Selectorate Theory,” or
the idea that in any state there exists a population known as the Selectorate,
and a population known as the Winning Coalition. According to the theory, a
political leader will retain the most strength in an autocracy in which the
Selectorate is large and the Winning Coalition is small.

“When I started out there was great resistance to the idea
that mathematics could be used to help understand politics,” Bueno de Mesquita
said. “I found early in my career that people were willing to assume an
argument was wrong simply if it assumed decision makers are rationally
self-interested. Fortunately that is less true today.”

After speaking for more than an hour, Bueno de Mesquita took
questions from the audience as wide-ranging as why dictators may make decisions
that benefit the general population, his opinion on sanctions on Iran, and what
he believes might be causing increased partisanship in America. Later he signed
copies of his recent books.